[1st-mile-nm] Muni Wireless Is Dead. Here Comes a New Way to Connect

[Gary Gomes]

This article from Wired lays out a way forward - now all we in New Mexico
need is the deep pocketed donor(s) to kick-start the process. :-)

Gary

Muni Wireless Is Dead. Here Comes a New Way to Connect
By Michael Fitzgerald
<http://www.wired.com/services/feedback/letterstoeditor> 04.10.08 | 7:00 PM 
U.S. cities that once trumpeted their free public WiFi plans are muting
their fanfare, as project after project stumbles. Now nonprofits have a plan
to succeed where city governments have failed. 
Two such examples launched this week, with at least $61 million in combined
funding. 
"There was a lot of breathlessness about municipal wireless. People thought
it was going to be a silver bullet to bring ubiquitous access and affordable
broadband in the United States. They were wrong," said Alec Ross, executive
vice president of One Economy <http://www.one-economy.com> , a Washington,
D.C.-based nonprofit. "In the post-municipal WiFi world, we need to focus on
community broadband." 
One Economy announced earlier this week that it is a launching a two-year
program to bring internet access to 500,000 low-income Americans in more
than 50 communities, backed in part by $36 million from AT&T and its
foundation. Then on Thursday, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation
<http://www.knightfoundation.org/>  said it will put up $15 million over
five years to create the nonprofit Knight Center of Digital Excellence in
Akron, Ohio. Knight has also set up a $10 million Digital Opportunity Fund,
which it will use to seed access projects for 26 communities that raise
matching funds. 
The two nonprofits developed their plans independently, but each expects to
use a combination of wireless and wired technologies to create access. 
Both nonprofits are starting their projects in the wake of a series of
high-profile stumbles
<http://www.wired.com/techbiz/it/news/2007/09/muni_wifi>  for wireless
access projects in cities like Boston
<http://www.boston.com/business/technology/articles/2008/04/04/boston_comes_
up_short_in_wi_fi_effort/> , Chicago, St. Louis and San Francisco. 
Many of these failures stem from a lack of clear models on how to develop
and sustain such networks, says Craig J. Settles, who runs successful.com, a
business-strategy firm with a focus on municipal wireless. "You had the
public good (of municipal wireless) built on a very shaky financial model,"
he said. 
One Economy will work with private partners to deploy broadband services. It
will also develop community service projects involving more than 5,000
teenagers. Finally, in the belief that once low-income people go online they
need more content that is tailored to them, One Economy has started a
content project, chaired jointly by Senators Barack Obama and John McCain
and spearheaded by the actor Robert Townsend. 
For its part, the Knight Center will have a dozen consultants specializing
in working with communities to develop sustainable internet-access plans. It
will also create a publicly available clearinghouse of examples from
successful approaches. One such example is how OneCommunity
<http://www.onecleveland.org> , a Cleveland-based nonprofit, has combined
public and private institutions to bring access to communities across
northeastern Ohio. Scot M. Rourke, president and CEO of OneCommunity, will
head the new Knight Center. 
"The goal is to collapse the time it takes for (communities) to educate
themselves" on how to create -- and sustain -- public high-speed internet
access, Rourke said. 
He noted that successful public access projects have not relied on a single
technology or approach. He also said the key to keeping these networks going
is to bring in partners from both government and industry, which expands the
potential range of funding, and can help create ongoing revenues for access
networks. 
Rourke said the new center will follow the same model of assessing community
needs and revenue sources in all of its projects. "We're planning for the
adoption and usage on the front end. It's the opposite of 'build it and they
will come.'"


Gary C. Gomes 
Managing Member 
SoundView Networks, LLC 
5085 Copper Bar Road 
Las Cruces, NM 88011 
575-521-1606 
Mobile: 575-202-6383 


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